Just Sold My Portfolio for 7 Figures USD, AMA.

[Krass]

2. I dont. I use a combination of both. Some articles with high search volumes will get long and elaborate articles that will naturally hoover up smaller terms. Some articles are purely sniping low comp low traffic terms to start the ball rolling with G.

Hey thanks for doing this and congratulations on the sale! Regarding the bolded part, since you've explained in past posts that every article must pay rent on the site, how much effort do you put into the "sniping articles" for the low traffic terms? I don't suppose you do 2000 words on these?

 

[MrMedia]

Hey thanks for doing this and congratulations on the sale! Regarding the bolded part, since you've explained in past posts that every article must pay rent on the site, how much effort do you put into the "sniping articles" for the low traffic terms? I don't suppose you do 2000 words on these?

Thank you.

I will normally start with a 1200-1500 word article and then if it shows promise (landing 4-20) then I will circle back and add more.

In my latest site a lot of the KGR terms are landing 1-5 already so I am happy to leave these articles as they are.

 

[Padi]

Thank you for sharing so much and congrats on the exit.

Q: When you merge articles during the pruning stage, do you follow any particular process or is it a manual assessment based on the posts to be merged? Presumably, it isn't just a simple paste of one below the other.

1. Do you rewrite parts to improve the flow
2. New title or just use the more relevant one
3. How do you do 301s - plugin / htaccess
4. Anything else ...

 

[CBDOil]

1. What would you not do that you learned over time?
2. What are your 3 top strategies that work the best for ranking?
3. If possible, what would yourself now go back and tell your younger self to avoid any headaches in SEO and ranking?

 

[larcha]

1. How long did new content take to rank before it brought in substantial traffic (100+ organic users per month)?
2. How many months did it take for you to achieve the 25,000/50,000 sessions in the last 30 days milestones in order to apply to Mediavine/Adthrive?
3. How much did you see your sites grow once you stopped publishing content? Did your sites still grow 1+ year after the big content push?

 

[MrMedia]

Thank you for sharing so much and congrats on the exit.

Q: When you merge articles during the pruning stage, do you follow any particular process or is it a manual assessment based on the posts to be merged? Presumably, it isn't just a simple paste of one below the other.

1. Do you rewrite parts to improve the flow
2. New title or just use the more relevant one
3. How do you do 301s - plugin / htaccess
4. Anything else ...

Yes rewrite to make the article flow, add new kw focussed title and update published date.
301s with Rank Math.

1. What would you not do that you learned over time?
2. What are your 3 top strategies that work the best for ranking?
3. If possible, what would yourself now go back and tell your younger self to avoid any headaches in SEO and ranking?

• I would remove any hesitancy around comitting to massive action.
• Content cant rank if it has not been published. Publish content on a huge scale, analyse and adapt.
• Not much tbh - everything is a lesson is some shape or other.

1. How long did new content take to rank before it brought in substantial traffic (100+ organic users per month)?
2. How many months did it take for you to achieve the 25,000/50,000 sessions in the last 30 days milestones in order to apply to Mediavine/Adthrive?
3. How much did you see your sites grow once you stopped publishing content? Did your sites still grow 1+ year after the big content push?

1. Totally depends - some articles just landed right away top 3 others spent months or years beyond page 2 then suddenly popped with a google update.
2. On my latest from scratch website - around 11 months.
3. Most of the growth came a year or so after major content pushes. This is an extremely long game.

 

[mysecretid]

This is a great AMA @MrMedia it's really given me some ideas. I have to admit I am hoping I don't become one of 'those' people who post in The Labratory!

I can absolutely understand why you would cash out, that is my goal with our main money maker, I want to use it to buy something super special here in France in cash. Then use our other websites to bring in the monthly cash, if we don't sell those too. I really like the idea of just chugging along creating websites and selling one every 6 months or so.

I have some questions too!

1. Do you use long tail keywords as the subheadings?
2. This going to sound dumb I'm sure... but when you have a writer write an article how do they know whether it hits good metrics in RankMath? Also if you have someone uploading for you, do they have to take RankMath suggestions and implement them? I want to hire writers for a different project than above but I never have done it and I feel like I'm missing the link between - Here's a keyword>>>>SEO/keyword optimised quality content. When I write a blog I write it, then when I put it on the website RankMath tells me I'm an awful person and I need to make changes - usually just headings, and increasing keyword density but still.
3. When did you quit your day job?
4. How are the new projects going?

 

[MrMedia]

This is a great AMA @MrMedia it's really given me some ideas. I have to admit I am hoping I don't become one of 'those' people who post in The Labratory!

I can absolutely understand why you would cash out, that is my goal with our main money maker, I want to use it to buy something super special here in France in cash. Then use our other websites to bring in the monthly cash, if we don't sell those too. I really like the idea of just chugging along creating websites and selling one every 6 months or so.

I have some questions too!

1. Do you use long tail keywords as the subheadings?
2. This going to sound dumb I'm sure... but when you have a writer write an article how do they know whether it hits good metrics in RankMath? Also if you have someone uploading for you, do they have to take RankMath suggestions and implement them? I want to hire writers for a different project than above but I never have done it and I feel like I'm missing the link between - Here's a keyword>>>>SEO/keyword optimised quality content. When I write a blog I write it, then when I put it on the website RankMath tells me I'm an awful person and I need to make changes - usually just headings, and increasing keyword density but still.
3. When did you quit your day job?
4. How are the new projects going?

1. Yes and variations of the head term too.
2. I ignore Rank Math in the initial phase of publishing. It is more important that the writer follows my brief which I know will work for SEO and then if necessary we can double back and look at on page vs competitors in 6 months once the post has aged a little and established a baseline ranking.
3. 4 Years after I should have.
4. Great thanks - check out my other thread for latest updates.

 

[Strike]

I think you mentioned before you typically pay $35 per 1000 words (correct me if I'm wrong).

• Is this an average (like $0.02 to $0.05 based on writer skill/topic) or $0.035 per word flat?
• Are your writers primarily ESL? If so, was your editor a native English speaker, and did he/she spend a decent amount of time correcting grammar/sentence structure? If not, did you ever struggle to get native language applicants at this rate? I know that finding writers is a game of churning through a heap and sticking with the good ones, but I struggle to get native English speaker applicants for any topic below $0.05 per word, on Upwork/PB or anywhere else.

Thanks

 

[Potatoe]

Thanks for keeping this running for almost a year so far.

I'm curious about post-sale, what sort of opportunities it's opened up for you?

Do you ever wish you'd sold sooner, or held on longer?

Did you have any requirements to stick around and help out during a transition period, or was it just a clean break once the sale went through? And do you ever take a peek at the portfolio to see how the new owners are doing with it?

Thanks again!

 

[MrMedia]

I think you mentioned before you typically pay $35 per 1000 words (correct me if I'm wrong).

• Is this an average (like $0.02 to $0.05 based on writer skill/topic) or $0.035 per word flat?
• Are your writers primarily ESL? If so, was your editor a native English speaker, and did he/she spend a decent amount of time correcting grammar/sentence structure? If not, did you ever struggle to get native language applicants at this rate? I know that finding writers is a game of churning through a heap and sticking with the good ones, but I struggle to get native English speaker applicants for any topic below $0.05 per word, on Upwork/PB or anywhere else.

Thanks

It averaged out to be around $35 per 1000 and my writers were from Eastern Europe and the Philipines.

Took a while to find the quality from the junk and scams but once I found them they stayed with me for years.

Thanks for keeping this running for almost a year so far.

I'm curious about post-sale, what sort of opportunities it's opened up for you?

Do you ever wish you'd sold sooner, or held on longer?

Did you have any requirements to stick around and help out during a transition period, or was it just a clean break once the sale went through? And do you ever take a peek at the portfolio to see how the new owners are doing with it?

Thanks again!

Post sale it has allowed me to invest in properties to earn income as a landlord. It has allowed me to invest in other things too like crypto, index funds and other investments.

I also bought back in and purchased a new website that was severely under valued and had huge upside potential. That is my main project now and will be another 7 figure exit in 19 months time.

I never agree to a post purchase transition of more than 2 months. I want to move on. That being said I am not an asshole and if the new owners ever email me asking questions I always oblige.

One site has gone X5 since I sold it. The new owner is some sort of SEO wonderkid so fair play to him.

One site is static and the other site looks like it got pinged in a recent update and lost a lot of traffic.

 

[illmasterj]

Post sale it has allowed me to invest in properties to earn income as a landlord. It has allowed me to invest in other things too like crypto, index funds and other investments.

What has been your best investment post-sale? What will you be pumping future capital into moving forward?

 

[MrMedia]

What has been your best investment post-sale? What will you be pumping future capital into moving forward?

The new website - insane ROI already.
In future I will be buying more buy to let rental properties and the rest into index funds.

 

[secretagentdad]

When are you going to make a bst for a managed content sites index fund?

Or Do you think those are conceptually stupid or something else...

It Seems like there is considerable opportunity for asset improvement with proven teams from what people have been posting around here.

 

[MrMedia]

When are you going to make a bst for a managed content sites index fund?

Or Do you think those are conceptually stupid or something else...

It Seems like there is considerable opportunity for asset improvement with proven teams from what people have been posting around here.

Not much interest in working for someone or being accountable to someone other than myself

 

[dlangpap]

Congrats on the success; stories like these are what keep us going.

Two questions come to mind now:

1. Did any of your sites get majorly wiped by a G update and did you manage to revive them? I'm asking because I bought this site about 2 years ago wanting to speed up the process and it got killed by the December update mainly. This is a site that was making around $800/month and now barely scrapping 50-100$...
Now, because I was working on another site, I admit I let it be from the time I bought it until I realized the traffic was not going to come back (it's a seasonal niche). But now, because I want to recoup that initial investment and more (and I'm pissed), I have put everything into this site: did the "kitchen sink" method explained in this forum to revive sites and now switching from affiliate to ads via KGR content initially.
But I do get doubts in my mind if I should continue to work and invest into this site or take my loss and start from scratch as there's that lingering doubt of whether Google somehow blacklists sites after updates and they can't come back or it's more difficult than starting a new site.

2. You've explained your old content pruning strategy but it still remains unclear to me:
-How do you define which ones are to be deleted and which ones re-written?
-For re-writing, how does the process work exactly? You mentioned you make the posts longer by adding around 500 words to them. But what is that extra content about? In other words, how do you know what to add? I assume you do some KW research again for the main KW of the post and then?

Cheers, appreciate the time!

 

[Nobody]

#1

Quote:
Once you commit to something properly the difference is night and day and a few months after that I had 3 writers full time cranking out 60k words per week.

3 Writers 60k words per "week", that's 20k words per writer per week. That's 80k per writer per month.
If the Writer writes 5 days a week that's 4k per day. That's not really realistic, isn't it?

If I want a 2.000+ Article, the Writer is normally busy for a few days.

What do you think is the range of words that a beginner/normal/good writer can crack out per week?

#2
you wrote that you find your team only on Upwork and tested the writer with a free article.

quote from you:
"Work through a ton of shit and find the diamonds and when you get them, keep them no matter what. Use bonuses and incentives for good work, timely delivery, etc."

can you go a little more in detail on how to find A-Writers that write for this amount?
or can you recommend some sources, for getting better in the briefing and qualifying writers?
I'm not a total beginner, but I'm always looking to improve my game.

(side note
I'm also involved in international sites (English) but my core market is Germany, Switzerland & Austria.
35$ per 2.000 words would be a dream for "good" german content.
The price range per word can be from 5 to 20-30 euro cents based on the topic.

 

[Lowrider]

I'm also involved in international sites (English) but my core market is Germany, Switzerland & Austria.
35$ per 2.000 words would be a dream for "good" german content.
The price range per word can be from 5 to 20-30 euro cents based on the topic.

I'm running also a site is the German market. Until now, I didn't outsource the content writing. Interesting to hear that German writers want to charge that much. Wouldn't it be better to outsource to English writers and translate it to German (DeepL for the main translation and the remaining part by a human). Certainly, not applicable for localized content.
That's what I wanted to do for my German content, that why I'm curious to know if you have experience with it.

 

[MrMedia]

#1


3 Writers 60k words per "week", that's 20k words per writer per week. That's 80k per writer per month.
If the Writer writes 5 days a week that's 4k per day. That's not really realistic, isn't it?

If I want a 2.000+ Article, the Writer is normally busy for a few days.

What do you think is the range of words that a beginner/normal/good writer can crack out per week?

#2
you wrote that you find your team only on Upwork and tested the writer with a free article.



can you go a little more in detail on how to find A-Writers that write for this amount?
or can you recommend some sources, for getting better in the briefing and qualifying writers?
I'm not a total beginner, but I'm always looking to improve my game.

(side note
I'm also involved in international sites (English) but my core market is Germany, Switzerland & Austria.
35$ per 2.000 words would be a dream for "good" german content.
The price range per word can be from 5 to 20-30 euro cents based on the topic.

It is what it is. I found good writers who could crank volume. No magic tbh just get loads to do test articles and filter from there. I’ve been scammed for thousands with dupe content before so there is no perfect process. Just keep searching and testing writers.

 

[bernard]

I remember when I got into the online stuff as a 20 something backpacking in Asia. More than a decade ago.

I could write 2000 words an hour for 2 hours a day. $5 pr. 500 words.

Then I would be absolutely mentally done, my mind a blurry haze.

Still, it is WAY more efficient than I can do now.

 

[Nobody]

I'm running also a site is the German market. Until now, I didn't outsource the content writing. Interesting to hear that German writers want to charge that much. Wouldn't it be better to outsource to English writers and translate it to German (DeepL for the main translation and the remaining part by a human). Certainly, not applicable for localized content.
That's what I wanted to do for my German content, that why I'm curious to know if you have experience with it.

From my experience, you can get on the biggest content platforms like textbroker, very cheap german content, but the quality depends extremely on what kind of content writer you get. also stars matter.

"sometimes" 4 stars are better than 5stars.
But as MrMedia says, finding good & cheap Writers is not common.

For example, I never have seen a writer that can crack out 4.000 words of good quality content per day. Maybe I was simply unlucky...

I use also writers and I`m highly focused/obsessed with my briefings.

Keep in mind for the English language you have extremely high human resources worldwide, also in "cheap" countries.

For German you have: Germany, Switzerland, Austria. Bad countries for cheap workers ;-)

Here you can see a salary overview: https://de.jobted.com/gehalt/texter

But I don't wanna go more offtopic here.
Back to Mr.Media, he has the spotlight here.

 

[Strike]

Did you use a lawyer during the process? If so, did you hire locally or look for one in the states (since I'm assuming EF's contracts are executed according to US law)?

 

[MrMedia]

Did you use a lawyer during the process? If so, did you hire locally or look for one in the states (since I'm assuming EF's contracts are executed according to US law)?

No. EF covered contracts that I reviewed and was happy with. Might not be to everyone’s taste but I felt comfortable.

 

[dlangpap]

Congrats on the success!

1. Did any of your sites ever get majorly wiped by a G update and, if yes, were you able to revive them? What were the main strategies you used to try to revive them?

2. You've explained your old content pruning strategy but it still remains unclear to me:
-How do you define which posts are to be deleted and which ones re-written?
-For re-writing, how does the process work exactly? You mentioned you make the posts longer by adding around 500 words to them. But what is that extra content about? In other words, how do you know what to add? I assume you do some KW research again for the main KW of the post and then?

Thanks!

 

[MrMedia]

Congrats on the success!

1. Did any of your sites ever get majorly wiped by a G update and, if yes, were you able to revive them? What were the main strategies you used to try to revive them?

2. You've explained your old content pruning strategy but it still remains unclear to me:
-How do you define which posts are to be deleted and which ones re-written?
-For re-writing, how does the process work exactly? You mentioned you make the posts longer by adding around 500 words to them. But what is that extra content about? In other words, how do you know what to add? I assume you do some KW research again for the main KW of the post and then?

Thanks!

1. Yes - one was completely destroyed by a competitor with negative SEO days before I was about to list for sale Lost about $400k. In turn I destroyed his site so although we both lost it gave me cold comfort.

2. Posts that are selected for updates vs rewriting really depends on case by case basis. If it shows zero signs of ranking ever I will just leave it or if my gut tells me it is hurting the site somehow I will delete. More an art than a science.

Posts that get updated are posts that show promise and could do with a freshness bump. If I trust my writer enough I will often say add 500 more words to these posts, include this related kw. Thats about it as the main research has already been done in the first place when the post was created.